Abstract

One of the objectives of today’s tertiary curriculum is usually to equip graduates with generic attributes required for their particular discipline. These attributes, for example, team building, leadership, communication and information and technology literacy, are often defined either by the educational institution or the professional body that is associated with the discipline of study. Anecdotal evidence from Information Systems (IS) industry interviews and a study by Turner and Lowry (1999) suggest that tertiary curricula in IS do not meet the needs of industry; a situation that is likely to be mirrored in other disciplines. Educators of future professionals should be able to identify the depth of treatment given to the competencies of graduates, both required and desired by employers and professional bodies with specific reference to the discipline studied. This strengthens the role of universities, as a provider of professional education, by aligning professional education with industry needs. This paper proposes a methodology that will allow the continual evaluation of the coverage of the generic capabilities within a specific program of study. The methodology involves the mapping of the generic attributes against the unit objectives to determine the depth of treatment given a set of generic attributes within a specific curriculum document. The Model Curriculum and Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Information Systems (IS’97) will be used to illustrate the methodology. The methodology may be also applied to identify the depth of treatment of the generic attributes as expressed in the Australian Computer Society Core Body of Knowledge (Underwood, 1996). The generic attributes selected for investigation have been identified and validated in related studies (Snoke and Underwood, 1998a, ; 1998b, ; 1999, ; 2000, ; 2001a, ; 2001b).

Download

Share

COinS